


the part where

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Established Relationship, KNBxNBA, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: They might as well be in different worlds sometimes, but Tatsuya tries not to think that thought too often.
Relationships: Himuro Tatsuya/Kagami Taiga
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	the part where

**Author's Note:**

> for dw user aargle_baargle
> 
> full prompt: "I learned that no matter how much you want something, how many times you scream for it, sometimes it’s out of your reach."  
> —Natsume Takashi, Natsume Yuujincho, S4 E13
> 
> it's shipday so you'd think i'd stick to happy stuff but like....it's kagahimu lmao

They’ll probably win the championship this year. Tatsuya won’t count his baskets before they’re shot, but they’ve got two kids, eighteen and fresh and snappy, just for a year until they move on to the NBA and glory. Even now, rough and unfinished, they’re better than Tatsuya will ever be and he hates it. He’s used to it; he’s seen them on his teams, on other teams, caught a crisp pass whose trajectory to the net depends less on his shooting motion than the assurance that he’s just a redirection; he’s shot from beyond the line in the clear and had them block it coming out of nowhere, sharp reminders of a league where his skillset wouldn’t cut it and he’d been duct taped to the bench.

He’s one of the few players on his team to even sniff the NBA--not any marker of more than just luck and circumstance, but the kids all come to him anyway, asking him what the league’s like, what the US is like. Tatsuya rarely goes back; he’s got a permanent residency here in Spain, a decent grasp on the language and an apartment he’s already filled with too many years of his life to leave lightly (maybe the longest he’s ever lived anywhere, given all the time he’d spent going across the Pacific as a kid). And it’s been years since his last game in the US, a handful of minutes in the middle of March in Oklahoma, before he’d found out he’d been cut on the flight back. These kids will do fine; Tatsuya assures them it’s mostly just better competition and longer travel distances. That and better pay, but they’re young enough and grew up well-off enough that money all just seems like numbers (and they’ve already got sponsorships over here). 

The resentment stays out of Tatsuya’s voice; it always does somehow, no matter how tired and achy he is, how old he feels, how worn and stretched like overworked dough that’s not going to make a great loaf of bread. It’s like he’s juggling glass jars and they keep getting heavier, and sooner or later one is going to fall and smash on the floor. He’s losing ground when he should be gaining, staying up later to cram more video into the data banks of his mind and analyzing every mistake he’d made in practice and in the last few games, mistakes he should have avoided and maybe a year or two ago would have. He’s past his prime; he’s hit his ceiling and no matter how much he beats his fists against it he can’t crack the plaster. He’ll never make it back to the NBA; he’ll be here forever, making international calls to his parents and waking up six hours late to Taiga’s tweets and game highlights, Taiga’s LINE messages (and they almost always come when he’s asleep, too).

They might as well be in different worlds sometimes, but Tatsuya tries not to think that thought too often.

* * *

Taiga wasn’t supposed to come over the all-star break, but he’s injured enough to skip out and plan a trip to Spain, as spontaneous as they’ve been since before they realized they were spontaneous, when they took for granted going over to each other’s houses like they’d always be able to do it. Still, if Tatsuya were in Taiga’s situation--it’s hard to imagine what a different person he’d be, but he’d play through the injury. Stupid, maybe, especially for a game people don’t take seriously, but--maybe that’s why he couldn’t make it over there.

It’s hard not to resent; Tatsuya can usually push it away for the duration of Taiga’s visits, though. He takes Taiga to the new bar he’d mentioned a few months ago (were they speaking more conversationally then? It’s hard to remember) and Taiga notes the differences in the trees in the park from the last time he was here, over the summer shortly after Tatsuya had visited him in Chicago. They have sex in the shower and Tatsuya had forgotten what it’s like to have his hands up against the grout in the tiles, his mouth on Taiga’s shoulder.

Taiga sleeps through half the morning, groans into the sunlight, and Tatsuya makes him breakfast in bed, eggs runny the way Taiga likes them, and promises they’ll make paella sometime when Taiga’s still here.

“I’ll hold you to it,” Taiga says, kissing Tatsuya with egg still on his lip.

Taiga comes to his game, spends half the time signing autographs. Tatsuya thinks about asking Taiga for a one-on-one, about how the last time they’d done it was two summers ago in Chicago when it’s light out until so very late, when Taiga had wiped the floor with him so easily, when Tatsuya was done and Taiga hadn’t tapped into his reserves at all, and how the silence between them had never been awkward before then, but since then it almost always has been, this moment catching and tangling on their thoughts like a loose thread on a t-shirt caught on a doorknob, a zipper.

He always catches the thread in time, before it gets too out of hand, before they completely unravel. Or maybe he only thinks he does, because sometimes Taiga looks at him like he’s hesitating, like he wants to pull the thread or just snap it off. He finally yanks when there are two days left in his stay, when he’s been angling at it all through their dinner in a nice cafe and after Tatsuya has stopped trying to steer the conversation away--better let the inevitable fall.

“It always feels like you’re out of reach,” says Taiga, holding up his hand as if to illustrate it, rubbing his fingers against each other. “You’re off living this life over in Europe, and I don’t know how to find your highlights and you’re always tweeting in Spanish and hanging out by the ocean, and...I don’t know.”

Taiga hasn’t caught him this off-guard in years, no, decades, not since the first time he’d blown by him in a practice game when they’d both had perpetually skinned knees and Tatsuya was noticeably taller.

“What?”

Taiga’s shoulders sag. “Are you not doing this on purpose?”

“Who gives a--why do my tweets matter? You never message me on LINE when I’m awake, and you know the time difference. I didn’t even know you still looked at my tweets, or that you were interested in my highlights--why would you be?”

“Jesus,” says Taiga. “Can this just not fucking be about your--inferiority complex or whatever? Of course I want to see your highlights; I don’t care that I can’t understand the announcers and that you’re not in the NBA--like, obviously I care about that, otherwise I wouldn’t keep trying to get you to come back--if you think you’re not good enough, what od you have to lose?”

“I don’t want to come back because you called in a favor!”

“The whole goddamn league is favors, someone’s son or brother getting drafted or getting another shot, someone’s high school coach knowing the right college coach. If Alex hadn’t gotten me into that high school—”

“You would have gotten in the league anyway.”

“You don’t know that! Maybe I would have, but--I don’t know, do you want things to be more difficult for me? I want to spend more than a few weeks here and there with you. And I want you to have another shot, because I know you want this, and we’re not getting any younger, and--I don’t know.”

He looks like he’s going to cry. Tatsuya feels like he might, like his stomach is being ripped apart from the inside, like he’s hanging on a like fifty-thousand feet above the ocean, far from shore, about to plummet like a rocket that’s come back to earth, burning through the atmosphere. He doesn’t feel like apologizing. Taiga could find his highlights if he really wanted to figure out how; Taiga could message him when he’s awake; Taiga could ask him if he wants a favor done before he sets it up. Taiga could do all of those things, but he hadn’t, and Tatsuya could yell at him or get up and leave a fistful of bills on the table and if they were ten or fifteen years younger maybe he would have done that. 

He hadn’t sent Taiga his highlights (Taiga could have asked more); he hadn’t been tweeting for Taiga and hadn’t considered that; he hadn’t tried harder to maintain conversations when they were both awake; he hadn’t told Taiga that any of this had bothered him; he’d refused again and again to just swallow his damn pride and take what was offered. He’d projected out this picturesque kind of life and had just assumed the whole way that Taiga would know that was only a facade he could peel away. Neither of them is blameless here, but Tatsuya’s too old and tired to play these petty games with emotional poker chips--he’d rather clear them off the table, but he doesn’t know how, and he knows enough to know the chips do matter to some degree. It’s not enough (it never would have been) to acknowledge that he fucked up out loud. It’s not right to change the subject to something a little sweeter; that’s an evasion they both know too well. 

“Would you like to see a dessert menu?”

The waiter has taken their lull in conversation as an opportunity.

“Dessert,” Tatsuya tells Taiga.

He nods, and Tatsuya would have said yes anyway. They’re going to need more time, and a place where they can talk like this across from each other. The waiter returns quickly with small menu cards, and Tatsuya takes a cursory glance at his. Tea, and--he would love to see what Taiga thinks of their chocolate cake, but maybe now isn’t the time to split something. Or maybe it is. 

“It’s hard for me to consider what you’re feeling when I don’t know what it is,” says Tatsuya. “I know I can be self-absorbed at the best of times, and it’s easy for me to read you when you’re sitting next to me, but it’s hard when you’re across the ocean and we’re not even texting that often. I didn’t know you were reading my tweets, and I thought you’d be able to find my highlights pretty easily, but maybe that’s just because I know where to look and I can read the Spanish sports sites. And it goes both ways. I could have made it easier for you.”

He thinks that Taiga will say that he never makes it easy, which is true and fair and will still hurt like hell.

“You could have, yeah. But you’re right.”

And this is the part, maybe, where he says it’s too much, no way to reconcile the puzzle pieces that have been whittled away by time, where he severs it further, claws it apart like a wildcat.

“Would you consider coming back? Whether or not I have anything to do with it.”

It’s badly-worded, but Tatsuya gets the gist of it.

“I really don’t think I’m good enough--personal issues or nepotism aside--to be a starter there. But maybe I’m wrong, and I do think about the what-ifs a lot, and--I’ll be kicking myself forever if I don’t give myself another chance. I do have a life here, and it’s pretty good, but it would be better if I saw you more, even if I was playing less.”

His gaze doesn’t flinch. Maybe this isn’t enough for Taiga, but it’s what he can offer.

“Okay,” says Taiga. “So that’s a yes?”

“Yes,” says Tatsuya. “I would. Is there something you have in mind?”

“Well...our two best guards are probably leaving at the end of the season. The market looks pretty think. The GM’s a pretty reasonable guy, and if I lobby hard enough he’d give you a shot. I do understand if you want to play somewhere else, establish your own territory or whatever, but...”

Tatsuya bites his lip. It’s not a hard choice, really, but he can’t say yes and decide on no later. Going from rarely seeing Taiga to seeing him all the time, every day--assuming he makes the team and stays healthy--will be an adjustment, but they have so many years to catch up on, and as many of Tatsuya’s wildest fantasies involve getting past Taiga’s defense, throwing a buzzer-beater over Taiga’s outstretched arms, there are more where he throws Taiga a perfect chest-pass, where the ticker tape rains down on them on center court. Yes, he wants to make it on his own, do it with weights strapped on his chest and ankles, make it measurably harder for himself and still triumph, but it’s not like playing in the NBA is easy when you’re handed a royal straight flush. 

“Thank you,” Tatsuya says. “Please do put in a word for me.”

Taiga smiles, still a little taut on his cheeks. When the waiter returns, Tatsuya orders the chocolate cake. 

“I know this isn’t over,” Tatsuya says. 

(They have more than face-to-face time to catch up on, years of things unsaid and left not understood, gaps in understanding that hadn’t been there from the start but had grown like moss, difficult to tell that they hadn’t always been there because they hadn’t always been looking for them, things that had looked different on the other side of the world.)

“Yeah.” Taiga exhales. “It’s not.”


End file.
